The American Southwest.

This week Tina brings us the 100th Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. Each week I look forward to either searching my galleries or grabbing my camera to find appropriate images to share that focus on the challenge topic. Tina writes in part, “This week, share your images and thoughts about the long and winding road. Feel free to be literal or metaphorical in your approach.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

This week, with travel still curtailed to a large degree by COVID-19, I am missing our usual spring travels, so I welcome this week’s challenge and feature views of roads captured by my cameras in the states of Utah and Arizona. To make up for not going there to capture current photos, I went all the way back to the original photos captured in years past and reprocessed them using the latest tools and skills I have learned after rekindling my interest in photography. Many of my early photos were little more than snapshots with minimal processing to bring out the details of elements in the image I attempted to capture. All of the photos in this post were reprocessed with tools that I have since learned to use. These versions have never been published before, must being processed just hours ago.  I’ve learned there is a place in my heart for black and white, and my first image features a black and white view of a winding road that meanders through Schafer Canyon in Canyonlands National Park.

Another view from Canyonlands features a road carved on top of an unusual ridgeline within one of the canyons. We left that road trip to those much more adventurous than my wife and me.

On our trip through Utah that year, we also visited Bryce Canyon and captured photos I’ve shared many times in previous challenges. This photo features a tunnel carved through a rock in Red Canyon, just outside of Bryce in the Dixie National Forest.

My last two images feature long and winding roads through my adopted home state of Arizona. My wife and I are like children of divorced parents who spend half a year with each one, Arizona in the winter, North Dakota in the summer. On the border with Utah, Monument Valley is the backdrop of many mid-20th century westerns. John Wayne alone starred in five films shot principally in this beautiful area that is now part of the Navajo Nation.

My final long and winding road image was captured in northeast Arizona near the community of Chinle. Though not as deep nor as long as the Grand Canyon in northwest Arizona, Canyon de Chelly is, in my opinion anyway, far more beautiful and spectacular. If your browser supports the function, you can click on an image to view an enlarged version to see greater detail. With this post, I pass along my best wishes for you, dear reader, to stay safe and healthy in these troubled times.

John Steiner